Victoria folk band Jon and Roy have been busy making music since 2005. The two musicians independently released their eighth album, By My Side, in May, available for purchase online. The band has been touring extensively throughout Canada in support of the album, ending their tour at Rifflandia festival recently. Band Member Jon Middleton recently […]
May 29, 2024
Victoria poet John Barton, perhaps as well known as the editor of The Malahat Review as for his 10 previous books of poetry, has just launched Polari, a new collection with Icehouse Poetry, an imprint of Goose Lane Editions. Co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets, he has won a number of […]
May 6, 2024
British Columbia writer Margaret Gunning just published her third novel, The Glass Character, with Thistledown Press. Gunning, a long-time print journalist, columnist and reviewer, as well as a poet, has written two previous novels, Better than Life and Mallory. She recently took the time to sit down in her office in Coquitlam, B.C., to answer questions […]
April 21, 2024
Andrea Raine is a local Victoria author and University of Victoria alumna. She has participated in the Glenairley writing retreats led by Canadian writer Patrick Lane in Sooke, B.C. and has been attending the Planet Earth Poetry reading series since 1997. She published her first book of poetry, A Mother’s String, in 2005 through Ekstatis […]
Katrin Horowitz is a Victoria writer whose second novel, The Best Soldier’s Wife (Quadra Books, 184 pages, $21.95,) was a finalist in Mother Tongue Publishing’s second Great B.C. Novel Contest. Horowitz’s protagonist Amy Malcolm, whose husband volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, writes a series of letters to the wife of the Chief of Defence Staff, […]
Patricia Skidmore (left), who lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, has written a moving book about her mother’s experiences as a child migrant to Canada in 1937. Marjorie Arnison was from Whitley Bay in northeastern England. She lived in Birmingham for seven months before being sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School in […]
February 26, 2024
The Vancouver Island Music Awards (VIMA) is gearing up for the 9th Annual Awards show on April 28th. Some of this year’s nominees include the Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra, Steph MacPherson, Woodsmen, Man Made Lake, and Carli and Julie Kennedy. Andrea Routley recently talked with James Kasper, the founder and producer of VIMA, about what to […]
Chris Ho’s new CD, City of Dust, released January 18, 2024 at the Victoria Event Centre, has been keeping Lynne Van Luven happy company for the past couple of weeks. Smitten by the music and lyrics, she keeps changing her mind about her favourite songs. Today, it’s “Ghost Limbs.” Tomorrow, it could be “Story of […]
Kamal Al-Solayee Photo by Gary Gould/Ryerson Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes By Kamal Al-Solaylee Harper Collins, 204 pages, $27.99 Kamal Al-Solaylee teaches journalism at Ryerson University and is a former theatre critic for the Globe and Mail. He answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions via-email at the end of September. He noted that his memoir […]
September 27, 2024
Lorna Crozier’s latest book, The Book of Marvels, was published this Fall by Greystone Books. Student Jenny Aitken visited Crozier’s cozy office at the University of Victoria to discuss the creation of this new work, which will be launched October 3 , 7:30 p.m. at the UVIC Bookstore. Q: How was it different describing household […]